The most common indication for cardiac surgical intervention is atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, often in the presence of impaired ventricular function. Available techniques for predicting functional recovery of myocardium with revascularization are less than optimal, particularly for the severely impaired ventricle in which the issue is most critical. A better means of assessing myocardial recoverability is apparent. Our laboratory has demonstrated that regional systolic strain can be characterized using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with myocardial radiofrequency (RF) tissue-tagging. We propose to test the clinical applicability and utility of these newly developed systolic indices, which we believe most accurately reflect systolic function at the cellular level, by characterizing the response to dobutamine on a regional basis before and after surgical revascularization. These methodologies promise more quantitative assessment of regional ventricular function in three dimensional space with greater resolution than currently available techniques. Specifically we propose to test the hypothesis: (1) that a preoperative dobutamine-stimulated improvement in systolic myocardial strain in myocardial regions with impaired resting function is indicative of viability and therefore predictive of regional improvement in contractile function after surgical revascularization; (2) that a preoperative absence of such an improvement is indicative of nonviability and therefore predictive of lack of regional improvement in contractile function after surgical revascularization.